Case Study: The Fight Between Enjoyment and Responsibility
What it takes to want to change for the better
Case: I take pleasure in playing computer games, watching YouTube for hours, and browsing the internet and social media until midnight. Yet, I wish to become a more responsible and self-disciplined person. Whenever I think about changing myself, I enter a more serious mindset and feel as though I will lose all the pleasure, fun, and comfort I currently have. I know I need to change someday, but I never feel ready for it.
This is a very common problem that many people, including myself, struggle with. If you really stop and think about it, why should you change now? You are enjoying life. You play computer games for hours every day, watch porn, and hang out on social media and YouTube. I also had a period when I failed at university, but at the same time, I enjoyed every moment of that period. I would order food to my room and play computer games almost all day, which was very enjoyable.
Sometimes, we look at our lives and think we should do more, and eventually, we need to be disciplined, start working, or start exercising. But consciously or unconsciously, we say, “Not now, I’m not ready now.” We are enjoying our lives right now.
Now, let’s fast forward. Suppose I became disciplined, graduated from university, worked more, got promoted at work, started that side business I wanted, etc.
Why?
I would work more, work 60 hours a week, push myself, and eventually earn more money. Why?
Why?
So that I can retire early.
Okay, but what will you do when you retire early?
I will do what I want and enjoy life as I wish. For example, I will play computer games as much as I want, and watch YouTube. I will relax.
The problem is, that we are already enjoying life right now. So, what is the point of all that effort? At least, our brain thinks this way. If all that effort is just to achieve the pleasure you already have, why go through all the effort and pain?
Yes, there is a circuit in your brain that constantly calculates the cost and benefit of your actions. This circuit tells you, for example, “You need to go to the toilet now because you will be on a bus for 3 hours.” Even if I don’t want to go to the toilet now, it calculates that the cost of needing the toilet later will be high. This fundamental circuit processes every physiological signal, such as hunger and thirst, but it also handles abstract things. It looks at the cost of working today versus the benefit of playing computer games. Every time it does this, it says, “Why don’t I enjoy life now instead of making all that effort to enjoy life later.” It says, “I can get dopamine today, I can enjoy it today.”
So, how can a person really become disciplined? On one side, there is the pleasure I will have now from the internet and computer, and on the other side, there is working, which requires sweat and pain.
What you need to discover is the only thing that drives people to be disciplined: is competitive interest. We know this because there are tons of studies on addicted people.
(The concept of competitive interest comes from addiction therapy. Addiction is a huge motivation (the addict is highly motivated to use the substance), and quitting addiction, especially with substances, causes great pain. You need a reason to endure this pain, and that reason is called competitive interest. Here, interest means occupation or purpose, and it competes with the motivation for addiction. For example, when asked why to quit smoking, one might answer “to be alive for my daughter’s wedding.”)
I want to give you an example. I once had a friend who became addicted to opioid painkillers after a skiing accident. This person was highly functional and capable of achieving great things. I told him that if he wanted to overcome this addiction, he needed to be hospitalized and given painkillers. But at that time, he didn’t have the time to do this. So he had to undergo this treatment at home.
The good thing about opioid withdrawal syndrome is that it does not pose a life threat like alcohol withdrawal syndrome. So he decided to quit on his own, and it was the most painful experience of his life.
Whether it’s opioids or cigarettes, it is not easy to maintain the discipline required to quit addictive substances. These substances increase pleasure, they give us something. Quitting them has a painful cost. How does a person succeed in paying this painful cost?
The source of the problem of not being able to be disciplined is that we are not ready to pay this cost. So, how do we get ready? By creating competitive interest. From our studies with people who have overcome addiction, we learned that people need a good reason to be disciplined to quit. They need something they will want much more strongly than the pain of quitting the addictive substance.
So if you are not ready to be disciplined, you need to find the thing or things that will make the pain of being disciplined worthwhile. But here lies another trap, and this is why the discipline problem is so widespread today. Because most of our desires and wishes today come from the outside.
If you are someone who struggles with being disciplined, starts half-heartedly but soon gives up, you need to know where your desire for discipline comes from. Is it coming from within you or from social expectations?
Unfortunately, the world is increasingly turning into a place where we focus on meeting external desires. Every screen is full of personalized ads for us. All those apps and websites track your actions and then keep showing or telling you what you should want. Before a computer game is even released, its ads, short clips, and videos from influencers on the internet are released, and you start wanting the game before it is out.
Your parents, friends, and everyone around you tell you what you should want. What you should do. But none of these are competitive interests because they all come from outside.
As a society, we have completely forgotten how to find what we care about. If you are not ready to be disciplined, you will never be disciplined unless others force you. But if others force you to work, that is not discipline. It is the exact opposite because these are external forces controlling your behavior. Discipline, on the other hand, is an internal power that overcomes your barriers. So some people may work and succeed with external pressure, but they may not have an ounce of discipline. And when they are away from that external pressure, they struggle a lot.
So in light of all this, what can we do?
First, realize that most of the things you want right now come from outside and are not really things you want. You are turning to external desires like games, product consumption, etc., and these are such strong desires that you are even willing to sacrifice respect and money for them.
The second thing you need to do is to learn to develop healthy desires that fall into the category of competitive interest and make the cost of discipline worthwhile.
My first question to you is, what do you really want?
If your answer to this question is “I don’t know,” this indicates that your mind is swimming in the fog of external desires. Your mind is so full of ads and personalized internet cookies that you don’t even know what you want from the world.
The second question is, do you want to change?
If you answer this question by truly paying attention and observing yourself, you will see that you are actually saying no, “No, I do not want to change.”
You might say, if I don’t want to change, am I doomed then?
No. Here I will show you the way out because I have another question for you: “Would you like to want to change?”
Now you will see that you give a different answer. The answer to this is probably yes, and if your answer is yes, if you say, “I wish I were someone who wanted to change, I wish I were someone who wanted to be different,” then we have reached a very important point. You don’t want to change, but you want to want to change. Nobody tells you this, nobody asks you. Maybe they ask you if you want to change, but they don’t go one level deeper and ask if you would like to change. They don’t ask if you would like to be someone who wants to be different.
When we think about the person we want to be, we are confronted with a long list of things we want to do. Exercising regularly, eating healthy, saving money regularly, being successful in school, reaching a high position in a career, being successful with the opposite sex, etc. Most of the things on this list are not useful to us. What you need to do is write this list on a piece of paper and ask these questions for each item on the list:
“Is this something I really want or is it something someone or some people imposed on me from the outside?” “Does this come from within me or is it something that I have internalized due to the expectations of advertisements, my family, my environment, my partner, etc.?”
If you do this, you will see that a large part of the items on the list do not come from within you. In the end, you will have a much smaller list of things that come from within you. From this list, choose only one goal that you really want to achieve and focus solely on this thing for a while. What you need to do next is to start doing this goal, even in the smallest possible way.
For example, if you have prepared a list of things that you really want, not what society wants from you, and you chose the item “I want to exercise regularly.” After choosing this, go out and at least start walking regularly, do a total of 50 push-ups and sit-ups a day at home.
When you start doing this, a trap will come your way, or maybe you are already falling into it. You want to reach your goal, but while doing this, your goal of exercising will trigger the secondary goals that society has imposed on you, and you will start doing more than necessary. As soon as you start exercising, you will not want to do just 50 sit-ups; you will try to run 5 km a day, and do heavy-weight training, and you will quickly get tired and return to where you started.
This is a crucial point. The moment you begin something, many of your external desires will come into play and make you do much more than necessary. At this point, you should stop yourself, do not go beyond the minimum you have decided. You should start doing 50 sit-ups a day, and if you want to do more, force yourself to stay at that number for at least 30 days. Do not go beyond the number you set.
After a month of doing the minimum, you will see that you have started to internalize the goal. This is the process where the minimum goal you set becomes a habit, and you will gradually increase the amount you do. And by gradually increasing the minimum goal, you will begin to achieve what you want. At this stage, start asking yourself this question: what is the minimum amount I can do to make myself feel better?
When you do this, you will see that your desire to play games or watch YouTube for hours will decrease. You will begin to desire these things less and less. Your goals will gradually turn from external to internal, and you will become a more disciplined person. Once you reach this point, you will have truly discovered the meaning of discipline.
